A Poem on Faith, War, and Selective Gratitude
In her poignant poem The Geography of Miracles, Aarshiya Sen powerfully deconstructs selective gratitude, challenging us to find true holiness not in privilege, but in active human empathy amidst tragedy
The Geography of Miracles
They thank Heaven
for finding the keys
that never unlocked a prison.
For the rain
that came to their wedding,
while somewhere else
the same sky learned
how to fall as fire.
A mother folds her hands
before a meal,
calling every grain
a miracle.
Another mother folds
the smallest shirt she owns
because there is no child
left to grow into it.
The hymns are loud enough
to drown the headlines.
Blessed, they say.
Blessed
is the parking space.
Blessed
is the promotion.
Blessed
is the test result, the new house, the healed knee, the coin discovered
between sofa cushions.
And beyond the borders
of comfortable prayers,
a boy counts explosions
instead of birthdays.
A girl learns
that her mother’s voice
can disappear
faster than smoke.
A dog waits faithfully
beside a doorway
that no longer belongs
to a home.
The rivers carry names
instead of reflections.
The earth remembers
every body
that the politicians forgot.
Still,
they tell us
God is good.
Perhaps.
But goodness,
if it exists,
must be larger
than our selective gratitude.
What does omnipotence sound like
when hospitals collapse faster
than churches can sing?
What hymn survives
the taste of dust
inside a child’s lungs?
What blessing
can outweigh
an empty cradle?
We have become experts
at calling survival
a miracle,
as though the dead
simply lacked
the proper prayer.
As though faith
were a lottery
and grief
the losing ticket.
No—
if there is holiness
it lives
not in the applause
after fortune arrives,
but in the trembling hands
that pull strangers
from shattered stone.
In the doctor
who stitches flesh
by flashlight.
In the journalist
who writes names
others would erase.
In the woman
who breaks her last loaf of bread
into smaller hungers.
Perhaps
that is where Heaven
has always hidden—
inside those
who refuse
to become as indifferent
as the bombs.
And if the angels
are still listening,
let them carry
not our gratitude
for things
we never truly lacked,
but the unanswered prayers
still buried
beneath the rubble.
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